Hot Topics:

Opinion: Guest Opinions

Criminalizing homelessness

By Jerry Gordon

Posted:
03/16/2014 01:00:00 AM MDT

In 1894, Anatole France observed that "[t]he law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." The statement is, of course, a study in irony. But Anatole France was being direct with his words. We should be direct too.

Let's stop talking about the good homeless vs. the bad homeless. Let's not allow our comments to focus only upon those acts associated with the poorest socio-economic segment of our community and thereby mask status based enforcement. Let's avoid deluding ourselves with statements about already doing more than "our share" to help those in dire straits. Let's not perpetuate an image of the "otherness" of a part of our homeless population. Such an image can lead to dehumanization and have tragic results.

It is partially because of their perceived otherness that homeless people across the country find themselves feared. Their presence is increasingly being made illegal in public spaces. They are often just assumed to be criminals and so they are closely regulated by police. They are constantly being "moved along" and bounced between various communities.

Homeless people often have nowhere to sleep and suffer forfeiture of property if they lay down their heavy backpacks in the wrong places. It is dangerous to live on the streets and in some parts of the country homeless people have too often become victims of horrible hate crimes. The very poor enjoy no food security. Although they often lack access to adequate bathroom facilities, the homeless face penalties for relieving themselves behind bushes. Adequate health care, including mental health services, is often lacking for homeless members of society. Homeless people frequently find themselves the target of verbal abuse.

Advertisement

Most of all, members of the homeless population constantly receive a message that they are unwelcome. There are six awful words that describe that message: "We don't want your kind here."

The sentiment expressed in those words is not new. It was endured by Jews, artists and Romany Gypsies in the ramp up to the death camps of World War II. It was felt by Tutsis in the early stages of the Rwandan holocaust. American Indians felt that sentiment when they were rounded up and killed or banished to reservations. African Americans felt it in the form of Jim Crow laws and in a myriad of other forms of discrimination. Until very recently, gay Americans regularly felt the same sentiment - and sometimes they still do. In fact, this awful six word sentiment — we don't want your kind here — has probably been associated with all of the most egregious human rights deprivations in history.

Why are we seeing so many street people now? For decades, the distribution of wealth and opportunity in our society has been skewed toward those on the top rungs of the economic ladder. Housing for the poorest members of society has become increasingly scarce, in part because of rising land values and gentrification.

Still, aren't some homeless people strident, loud and especially unappealing? Yes. When a population is economically oppressed, individuals within it react in different ways. Some are meek and humble, their spirits worn down by the coarseness of the conditions under which they must survive. Some are angry and rebellious, not yet accepting the dead end path to which they find themselves consigned. Some deal with their pain by self-medicating with alcohol or drugs. What they all have in common is suffocating poverty.

We know that something must be done and, basically, we know the solutions - although finding ways to implement them will be challenging. The solution for homelessness is housing. The solution for mental health and addiction problems is treatment. The solution for the inundation of public spaces by homeless people is the establishment of additional alternative spaces within which homeless residents can spend their time. The solution for too much idle time is jobs or programs with which people can become engaged.

We also know what won't work. When asked to deal with street people, police officers essentially have two tools: jail and the threat of jail. But jail is not a good substitute for housing. Local incarceration does not provide ongoing medical, mental health or addiction treatment. Loss of freedom does nothing to enhance low self-esteem. In fact, using jail as a response to the needs of the very poor accomplishes almost nothing. On the other hand, cities all over the nation are spending millions of dollars each year on the fruitless process of funneling people through an endless and repetitive cycle of incarceration.

Boulder leaders have promised that a criminal justice crack-down will not constitute the entirety of this community's response to the serious problems of our poorest residents. That's good news because the criminal justice approach is mainly a dead end. Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert, the authors of the interesting book, "Banished: The New Control in Urban America," describe and analyze the national trend toward criminalizing the lives of homeless people. Their conclusion is that this approach is politically attractive, but that it is also a complete social policy failure.

Will our community do more to address some of the underlying problems faced by our poorest residents? If so, let's start with those approaches. When homeless members of our community have options about how to spend their days, we may not have to resort to use of the criminal justice system to force them out of public spaces. When there is less need for them to beg in public or drink and sleep in the parks, many of them will not do so.

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story